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You’ve just written your first children’s book about spiders. How did this come about?

I decided I wanted to write a book for very young children to try and influence them about spiders and teach them not to be afraid.

Spider is a story about a little boy called Rafael who meets a big hairy spider and then discovers he has a very special eight-legged friend to play with.

We hear that Rafael was inspired by a real-life little boy…

Yes. Three years ago, I was chatting to an actress’s seven-year-old son on set.

She had to go off and do something, so the two of us were left on our own. We got talking about insects and he said he thought spiders were horrible and he was scared of them.

So I told him lots of fascinating facts.

Did you change his mind?

I did!

The next day, his mum said: “Oh my goodness you’ve had such an influence on my son. He’s just told me that I must never kill a spider and how you can tell a male spider because it looks as though he has boxing gloves on.”